When Software Meets Hardware

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1. 1

   Fragments: October 21

   article

   Martin FowlerMartin FowlerOctober 21, 2026

   Gergely Orosz is frustrated at those that entered his explicitly “No AI” essay competition and used AI. He goes on to say: When I start to suspect some part is AI about someone I don’t know: how can I tell how much of it is? And how much time and effort do I want to invest to figure out? I fear most people do not realize this last part: that when it takes time and effort from others to figure out what % is AI, and what % is YOU, then I will simply assume it’s probably 100% AI and 0% you So when producing anything that is meant for other humans, if you use even a little AI, you risk the assumpt

   Original source ↗Frontier AISoftware engineering
2. 2

   Fragments: September 29

   article

   Martin FowlerMartin FowlerSeptember 29, 2026

   Simon Willison: The more time I spend working with coding agents, the more convinced I am that they make software engineering even harder We can do amazing things with them, but unlocking their full potential requires extraordinary discipline and knowledge This has been a constant impression I get from following Willison’s writing. While things like vibe coding get a lot of attention, the real strength of agentic engineering relies on more sophisticated techniques - and these are not easy to learn or execute. It’s a reason I’m wary of extrapolating my own dabblings into firm opinions about how

   Original source ↗Consciousness & philosophyFrontier AISoftware engineering
3. 3

   Bliki: Sensible Default

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   Martin FowlerMartin FowlerSeptember 29, 2026

   A Sensible Default is a practice that, absent some overriding context, should be used when carrying out a certain kind of task. In software development such sensible defaults might include things like “use version control”, “separate UI logic from domain logic”, “automate deployment pipelines”. The term “sensible default” is a deliberate contrast to “best practice”. Folks dislike calling things “best practice” because that term implies a general presumption that the best practice is something we should always expect to do. A “sensible default”, however, is something that should be reassessed i

   Original source ↗Software engineering
4. 4

   Principles for effective slides

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   Martin FowlerMartin FowlerSeptember 30, 2026

   Not every presentation needs slides, but when they earn their place, they work as a visual channel that complements the speaker rather than replacing them. Sumeet Gayathri Moghe sets out the principles that follow from that idea — control over the rate of knowledge exposition, tight coupling between slides and speaker, minimalism by default, visuals that say more than words can, and never sending your slides out in advance. more…

   Original source ↗Software engineering
5. 5

   Fragments: October 4

   article

   Martin FowlerMartin FowlerOctober 5, 2026

   In response to my last fragments (probably the bit about us worrying if LLMs have consciousness when we when we should be wondering why they don’t have a conscience) “Metalanguage” replied : we shipped the id and forgot the superego. classic software lifecycle. I don’t know what was on their mind, but their post immediately made me think of the classic 1956 movie Forbidden Planet. Plenty of sci-fi, and other literature, have explored humans creating technology with unintended behavior, going back at least to Mary Shelly. But that movie was particularly influential on sci-fi film-making and in

   Original source ↗Consciousness & philosophyFrontier AISoftware engineering
6. 6

   Are Harnesses Worth the Cost?

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   Martin FowlerMartin FowlerOctober 13, 2026

   Naresh Jain compares coding agents building the same API service with and without a behavioral harness. A frontier model, GPT-6 Sol, passed every external evaluation either way. But a cost-optimized model, GPT-6 Luna, succeeded in only 3 of 10 unharnessed runs and all 10 with the harness. While adding the harness increased token usage and runtime for Luna, the harnessed Luna runs achieved the same 10-for-10 reliability as GPT-6 Sol while costing 33% less per run ($0.273 vs $0.406). This experiment suggests a behavioral harness might be a practical way to get dependable results from smaller, co

   Original source ↗Frontier AISoftware engineering
7. 7

   The Craft of Practitioner Voice

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   Martin FowlerMartin FowlerOctober 13, 2026

   A couple of months ago Jim Highsmith explained how practitioners writing for each other forms a distinct style of writing. He now adds a section to the article with more detail on the craft of how we write in this style. How the writer shows up in the prose, its four principles, the role of story, how to sensibly use AI, three levels of editing, and clarity of the audience. more…

   Original source ↗Software engineering
8. 8

   Build your slide template

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   Martin FowlerMartin FowlerOctober 14, 2026

   Building a slide template starts with three foundational choices — colours, fonts and layouts. Sumeet Gayathri Moghe covers the basics of color theory and how to build a reusable palette, the essentials of typography, including serif, sans-serif, handwritten and monospace fonts, plus the finer points of kerning and leading, and why a near-blank layout might serve you better than the prescribed layouts that ship with your slideware. more…

   Original source ↗Software engineering
9. 9

   battledrones v14: Compass Rose, a four player map

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   Simon WillisonOctober 24, 2026

   Release: battledrones v14: Compass Rose, a four player map I added four player online mode to Battledrones - previous maps were limited to two. Here's the initial prompt I used: Add a new map for a four player battle - four way rotational symmetry, up to four AI players, works with the WebSocket non-audio based multiplayer mode so up to four human players can join (any spare slots use AI) Claude Opus 5.5 added a new map called "Compass Rose" and modified the WebSockets multiplayer network code to support up to four players for that map, joining via share links or QR codes. The new teams use ro

   Original source ↗Software engineering
10. 10

    AI code development

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    EarLevel EngineeringNigel RedmonOctober 22, 2026

    I’m far from early to the party, but I wanted to drop a note on using AI to develop code, and in particular managing the dirty work of audio plugins. Hint: Game changer. A couple of nights ago, I paid … Continue reading →

    Original source ↗Music discoverySoftware engineering
11. 11

    Introducing Kimi K3.1 Pro

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    Simon WillisonOctober 23, 2026

    Introducing Kimi K3.1 Pro Kimi K3.1 Pro landed on the Kimi API today - it's not yet open weights, but Moonshot promise "Full model weights will be released by Nov 4, 2026". They're also offering a "Highspeed" version that's 2-3x faster, at twice the price (except for input token cache hits, which are priced the same). The US dollar pricing is $2.00/million tokens for input and $10/million for output - the same as GPT-6.1 Sol and half the price of Claude Opus 5.5. Moonshot's own benchmarks show Kimi as approximately level with Opus 5.5 and GPT-6 Astra - beating them on a few benchmarks, coming

    Original source ↗Software engineering
12. 12

    Quick Study

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    Simon WillisonOctober 23, 2026

    Tool: Quick Study Prompt to Claude Opus 5.5 High : Build an artifact where you open a photo and it rapidly (in a few seconds) paints a version of that photo using a canvas element and simulated paintbrush See also my previous experiment getting Claude Fable to simulate a watercolor illustration with P5.js. Quick Study uses Sobel edge detection , with no external libraries beyond Google Fonts. Tags: tools

    Original source ↗Software engineering